


Love/Hate

by pigeonking



Series: The Missing Doctor Adventures - Season One [7]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 03:47:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonking/pseuds/pigeonking
Summary: My most popular original character meets my Doctor. This is Squirrel's third adventure from me.Things start to hot up for the Doctor and Clover too... Oh... and there's Daleks!





	

The last Dalek ship to fall out of the Time War drifted through space a lifeless husk for over a century before it became caught in the gravitational pull of the Manticore Belt, a vast and desolate field of asteroids on the edge of the Andromeda galaxy. Though lifeless the Dalek ship had a magnetic pull all of its own and over many more years hundreds of other derelict space craft found themselves attracted to it. Over that time the derelicts formed a crude sphere around the husk of the Dalek vessel.

Sometime in the mid twenty sixth century the sphere, which became known as the Scrap, became a home and a haven for wary space travellers who added their own ships to the sphere. Many chose to stay and make the Scrap a permanent home while others came and went as their whim took them. Few were aware of the nature of the vessel that provided the core of their new world. Younglings would tell ghost stories of the infamous core ship and as a result few would dare to venture so far. However, there were always those that were ready to dare others to brave a trip that they were too frightened to make themselves.

 

Chipmunk was the only enhanced human in her class. For all of the many varieties of life form that lived on the Scrap there was a lot of segregation of the species that went on. One of the only times that the different species got together was when they traded with each other in the market that had been set up by the early settlers within the derelict of an old Thoros Betan Mentor cargo vessel. Law enforcement on the Scrap was also an inter-species collaboration operated from within an old Judoon prison ship. Chipmunk’s father was a volunteer peace-keeping officer with the Scrap enforcers, but there was nothing that he could do to protect her from the bullies at the all human school she had been attending for the last seven months since her family had come to live on the Scrap.

If Chipmunk had been the kind of girl to lay blame on anyone for her misfortunes then she would probably have blamed her father for the predicament that she found herself in at the school. After all it was technically his fault that she was different from all the other human children.

Long before she had been born her father had undergone genetic enhancement surgery that had transformed him into a half-human and half-squirrel hybrid. This meant that his DNA was nearly fifty percent squirrel, so when he had conceived Chipmunk fourteen years ago those bright eyed and bushy tailed genes had been passed right on down to her.

Chipmunk was not bitter about this. She loved her father and who she was, but that did not stop her from being picked on by the other more ‘normal’ kids at her school, just because she was different to them.

Her only friend was Nemir, a half-human and half-Martian hybrid born of mixed parents. He was not Martian enough to attend a Martian school and only just human enough to have been accepted into the human one. He had been happy when Chipmunk arrived on her first day. Now he had someone who could share his misery.

It was the end of another school day and as usual the other kids were taking time out to harass Chipmunk and Nemir.

“Don’t you ever get bored of calling us the same old names every day?” Chipmunk squeaked with a roll of her eyes.

“Not really no.” chided the ringleader of the bullies, a tall, pretty blonde girl named Venus, so named because that was the planet her rich parents had been honeymooning on when they had conceived her. Venus’s parents were members of the Scrap governing council and lived on one of the fancier ships at the top of the sphere.

“It’s just that they’re not very imaginative and some of them aren’t even insulting!” Chipmunk observed. “I mean ‘Tufty-Ears’? I’m rather proud of my ‘tufty-ears’, draw attention to them as much as you want!” She fondled her ear tufts and even the hardest of hearts would have found her adorable in that moment.

Venus just happened to be one of those hard hearts.

“Are you sure? If I looked like you I think I’d want to throw myself out of the nearest airlock!” the bully retorted.

“Well I guess you’re kinda lucky that your mum and dad conceived you on Venus.” Chipmunk replied.

“What do you mean by that?” Venus’s face contorted with confusion and suddenly she didn’t look quite so pretty anymore.

“Well imagine what would have happened if they’d taken their honeymoon on Uranus instead!” Chipmunk winked at Nemir, who smiled back at her, as she delivered this blow.

“Why you little…!!!” Venus grabbed the front of Chipmunk’s tunic and raised her fist.

Chipmunk smiled even wider than before, showing off her prominent front incisors beautifully.

Things were about to get violent and violence was a language that Chipmunk was very fluent in indeed.

She swiped her right hand down almost casually, breaking Venus’s grip on her and with her left hand shoved the blonde bully away, causing her to stagger and almost fall.

Venus growled, undeterred by how easily she had been repulsed, and came at Chipmunk again.

Her smile never wavering, Chipmunk side stepped the clumsy charge and allowed Venus’s momentum to carry her face first into the bulk head.

“Ow! My noshe! I shink you boke my noshe!” Venus cried angrily, clutching her nose in both hands, blood pouring through her fingers like water through a sieve.

“Awww! I’m showwy!” Chipmunk chirped insincerely.

And then the other bullies waded in, six of them in all (not everyone in her class was an asshole).

Thanks to her mother and father’s training, Chipmunk was a competent martial artist and Nemir, being the son of a Martian Ice Warrior, wasn’t exactly a slouch either. They held their own well enough and gave as good as they got, but not all of the bullies were as clumsy and unskilled as Venus. Soon they had managed to overpower Chipmunk and Nemir and they held them pinned against the wall. Venus walked up to Chipmunk, still holding her bloodied nose with one hand. She glared into Chipmunk’s eyes, but the young hybrid stared her down defiant and unflinching, a trickle of blood running down her busted lip sustained in the short fight.

Venus pulled back her fist and drove it hard into Chipmunk’s stomach. Chipmunk would have doubled over in agony, the wind knocked out of her, were it not for the fact that she was being held up by two Neanderthals who shared half a brain between them.

“Fuck off, Venus!” she managed to gasp through her pain.

“You first, tufty-eared bitch!” Venus spat and punched her again.

Venus gave Chipmunk a chance to recover her breath again before she continued.

“You know there is one way that you and the Martian twerp here might earn our respect. But nah… you’d never be up for it.” Venus turned away to emphasise her contempt.

Chipmunk had to spit a mouthful of blood onto the deck before she could respond.

“Name it. Nemmy and I are up for any challenge you can throw at us!” she retorted.

“You’ve heard the stories about the core ship? The ship that lies at the centre of the Scrap?” Venus asked.

“Of course. Who hasn’t?” Chipmunk replied. “They say it’s haunted by whatever creatures used to fly it before it became derelict, but you don’t believe that do you?” Her voice dripped with scorn.

“Doesn’t matter if I believe it or not.” Venus answered evenly. “Here’s the deal; if you and the Martian twerp are willing to go down to the core ship and bring back something that proves that you’ve been there, then we might stop giving you both a hard time.”

“Might isn’t good enough!” Nemir said.

Chipmunk nodded in agreement. “If we do this we want your word that you’ll stay off our backs forever, deal?”

“Deal!” Venus agreed and she held out her bloodied hand for Chipmunk to shake.

The Neanderthals released her. Chipmunk wiped blood away from her mouth before gripping Venus’s offered hand in her own and shaking on their deal.

 

When the first settlers had come to the Scrap a team of engineers had found a way of connecting each ship that composed the sphere with a network of tunnels each with their own personalised gravity and atmosphere. Any of the derelicts that had lost their life support capability had been restored to full working order at the same time so that there was no part of the Scrap that was uninhabitable. This included the core ship. Legend had it that no one had been in the core ship since then. Until today.

Chipmunk lowered herself through the service hatch from the tunnel that she and Nemir had traversed and onto what would have been the bridge of the Dalek ship. Nemir followed soon after.

They had both met up after having dinner at home with their parents and made the journey straight to the core immediately afterwards.

Chipmunk’s father had questioned her about her busted lip at the dinner table.

“Have you been fighting again, darling?” Squirrel had asked with a note of concern. For a man who had undergone genetic enhancements to look like a squirrel he cut a very powerful and imposing figure. For all that though he was a gentle giant who loved his wife and daughter dearly.

“Yeah, but I broke the other girl’s nose.” Chipmunk had told him with a proud grin.

“That’s my girl!” Squirrel had replied, earning him a look of disapproval from his wife and Chipmunk’s mother, Tammy.

“That’s not the right way to settle disputes, sweetheart!” Tammy had scalded gently. She was a marked contrast to her husband, being small and petite with long black hair which she habitually kept tied into a pony tail. Unlike her husband Tammy was completely human, barring the fact that her right arm was a flawless synthetic, cybernetic replacement for the arm that she had lost several years ago in an engineering accident, long before Chipmunk had even been born.

“She started it, mum. I’m not gonna just let them walk all over me. If I get attacked I’m gonna defend myself. You and dad both taught me that, ever since I was very little.” Chipmunk argued.

“That was when we were still living the salvagers’ life. Things are different now. We’re trying to make a life in this place. You should be making friends, not enemies.” Tammy rebuked.

“I didn’t ask them to start bullying me. Besides, I have one good friend. I don’t need any more than that!” Chipmunk smiled at her mother reassuringly.

“Okay,” Tammy conceded, “but if things start to get out of hand you tell us, are we clear?”

“Yes, mum. We’re clear.” Chipmunk had nodded.

She had excused herself soon after that and now here she was with Nemir on the Dalek ship.

If all went well the two of them might never have to worry about being bullied ever again.

The bridge of the Dalek spaceship was dimly lit as if someone had dimmed the lighting for a romantic supper, but the décor of the craft was about as far away from romantic as you could get. There were two low arched doors at either end of the room which looked like they would slide upwards automatically if they’d had any power in them. When the engineers had fixed the life support they had left everything else well alone. A large view screen dominated one wall of the room and there were smaller screens dotted about that were likely computer monitors. Raised dais with control consoles built into them were scattered here and there; the buttons and levers were rather chunky and when Chipmunk and Nemir saw one of the operators was still at its post they could see why they needed to be.

The creature was squat and metallic like some sort of robot. Its armour was bronze though it had dulled with age and was covered in dust and the webs of Weave Spiders. A long telescopic lens was set into its domed head and was probably what it had seen out of, Chipmunk reasoned. There were two other protuberances sticking out at the middle of its metallic torso. On the left a short stubby, hollow tube that may have been a gun of some kind and on the right a longer telescopic arm like extension that ended in a black suction cup. Round spheres decorated the lower body and there were two light bulbs either side of its head which were long inactive. A dark, pungent fluid that had long ago dried to a flaky crust was caked to the armour at the seams where the head met the body, as if something organic had leaked out long ago.

“What do you suppose it used to be?” Nemir wondered.

“I don’t know, but for some reason I’m glad that it’s dead.” Chipmunk replied with an involuntary shudder.

They left the dead Dalek alone and looked around the rest of the bridge.

“You know when the engineers came here to fix the life support all those years ago one of them was killed horribly in an accident. Some sort of booby trap in the ship’s systems. The man was reduced to a charred, blackened skeleton, or so I was told.” Nemir remarked, the low sibilant voice that he’d inherited from his father made the macabre fact sound as sinister as he had intended it to be.

“I guess that means we’d better be careful then.” Chipmunk smiled. “We still need to find something that we can take away with us to prove that we were here.”

“There doesn’t seem to be anything removable around here!” Nemir lamented. “We could probably detach one of the metal limbs on that creature, but I don’t want to touch it!”

“Me either.” Chipmunk agreed and felt herself shudder again. “Let’s just keep looking.”

Nemir made his way over to one of the doors.

“Do you think that between the two of us we might be able to lift this and see what’s on the other side?” he wondered.

“No harm in trying!” Chipmunk chirped and she moved to join him by the door, rubbing her hands together gleefully at the prospect of finally having something to do.

Neither of them had a crowbar which they could jemmy underneath to gain a purchase so they were forced to crouch down and try to slide their fingers under just enough to enable them to begin to attempt a lift.

The bottom of the door was tightly sealed against the floor so that there seemed little hope of getting their fingers in there. However, the fur on Chipmunk’s hands enabled her to place her palms on the surface of the door without slipping too much and with all her strength she began to push upwards. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she strained to move the door up just enough so that Nemir would be able to slide his fingers under. It was not an easy task. The hydraulics of the door were no doubt worn with age and the metal was rather heavy, but after a few moments of determined pushing Chipmunk felt the door begin to lift.

“That’s it! I can get my fingers under now!” Nemir called to her excitedly.

He did so and took the strain, holding the door up until Chipmunk was able to add her own fingers to the effort.

“Ready?” she asked.

Nemir nodded.

“On three!” Chipmunk said.

“One, two… three!”

Together they started to lift the door up higher and higher, inch by inch until finally they had it open enough so that one of them could get through.

“One of us is going to have to stay here and hold the door open while the other goes in and looks around.” Nemir said.

“I’ll go in.” Chipmunk volunteered.

“Okay, but be as quick as you can. This door is heavy.” Nemir agreed. He shifted himself into a position under the door so that he could take its weight upon his broad shoulders.

“Go!” he said urgently.

Chipmunk let go of the door and slipped into the adjoining room.

This room was bigger than the bridge. There was another door that led out at the other end and more control consoles and monitors set into the walls. The centre of the room was dominated by a large peculiar looking contraption that resembled some sort of processing unit where something went in at one end and something else came out at the other. The exit end of the machine looked large enough to accommodate one of those weird metal creatures that Chipmunk and Nemir had encountered on the bridge.

One of those creatures was positioned at the central control system that was situated in the middle of the machine. It was as dead and immobile as its fellow on the bridge, but this one had a metal, two-pronged claw on its right arm instead of the suction cup that the other had sported and the claw had become frozen in the act of inserting, or possibly extracting some kind of cylindrical device from a slot in the machine. The device was half in and half out of its moorings, but was out enough so that Chipmunk reckoned that she might be able to pry it loose and claim it for the prize that she and Nemir needed. The only trouble was that she would also have to remove the creature’s claw from around it too.

Chipmunk moved in as close as she was willing and slowly and carefully placed her hands around the device. She began to pull it up carefully and was surprised at how easily the device came up. With one hand she was able to gingerly remove the tip of the claw and then finish pulling up the device from its housing. In a matter of seconds it was free and Chipmunk stood cradling her prize in both hands.

“I’ve got something!” she called to Nemir excitedly.

“Good!” his voice called back. “Now get back out here!”

Chipmunk was only too happy to comply.

She ran over back to the door and ducked under. Nemir stepped out from under the door and almost immediately it slid back down with a harsh, grating protest.

Chipmunk showed him the strange relic that she had salvaged from the machine.

“What do you think it is?” Nemir asked her.

“I don’t know, but it was probably some vital component of that machine that was in there.” Chipmunk replied. “Nemmy, I think that it was something that they used to create more of their kind. I’m glad that it’s no longer working.”

“Me too.” Nemir concurred with a sideways glance at the dead Dalek at its console. The lens of the ‘eye’ appeared to be looking right at him and he looked away again quickly. “Let’s get out of here. We can show Venus and her fan club what we found in the morning. Right now I just want to go home.”

“You won’t get any arguments from me. Come on!” Chipmunk replied.

 

Back in the room that Chipmunk had not that long ago departed something began to stir within the machine that had previously been inactive. It had not been dead, just dormant. The dead Dalek had been in the process of trying to activate the machine before it had died. By removing the device that she had taken with her Chipmunk had inadvertently assisted the Dalek in completing its final task.

Now the machine was alive again and it had but one goal: create more Daleks.

A quick scan of the ship told it that there were no living Daleks on board; not any form of Dalek life whatsoever. An extended scan outside of the ship told the machine that there was other life out there. Life that could be corrupted and mutated into what was needed. They would not be pure Daleks, but they would suffice. A mechanical spider-like creature detached itself from the machine and scuttled to the nearest ventilation opening. Using a laser-cutter it gained access and entered the maze like system. It would leave the ship and hunt for suitable candidates. The Daleks would live on one way or another!

 

Six months later.

The _Bountiful_ had been the pride of the Thoros Betan trading fleet before its mysterious disappearance from the trading routes. Somehow it had run adrift in space abandoned by all hands and had ended up as a part of the Scrap, empty and derelict until the settlers had made it a trading point where they could all meet to trade and barter their wares.

Now it was abandoned again. The vast and cavernous cargo hold that had once housed the Scrap’s market was littered with the debris of abandoned stalls and produce, as if those who had been here had been forced to leave in a hurry.

The eerie silence was disturbed by an echoing howl that ripped through the air and reverberated from the metal walls like waves crashing over rocks. Somewhere in the middle of the hold, between two forgotten stalls the ghostly shape of a blue box manifested, gradually becoming more solid.

A light flashed sporadically on top of the box as it solidified, but winked out once its manifestation was completed. The noise also abated and the echo died a quiet and sudden death.

There were two doors set into the front of the blue box with white windows, one either side, at the top. A plaque above the doors proclaimed that this was a ‘POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX’ in bold white letters.

Almost immediately after the light had stopped flashing, the door on the right opened inwards and two people stepped out.

The first was a young woman in her early twenties with shoulder length blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing a figure hugging red catsuit of some unknown material.

Just behind her there came a man who appeared to be in his mid to late thirties with dark brown hair and eyes. He wore a long, grey cashmere jacket over black trousers and black steel toe-capped boots, with a navy blue shirt and tie. He pulled the door of the blue box shut behind him as he exited.

“Well this doesn’t look like Earth.” The woman observed as she took in her surroundings.

“We weren’t trying to get to Earth.” The man reminded her.

“I know that.” The woman replied. “We weren’t trying to get anywhere. We’re still picking destinations at random and letting the TARDIS decide for us, but the last two places we visited have both been on Earth. I’m just saying it’s a nice change is all!”

“Yes I see what you mean.” The man agreed. “I like Earth. It’s my favourite planet, but it is nice to have a bit of variety now and then.”

“So where do you think we are?” the woman wondered.

“Well, from the looks of things it looks like we’re in the middle of some sort of market square, but there’s no one about. And the metal walls…” he looked up, “and ceiling suggest to me we’re either on a space station or a spaceship.”

“So where do you think everyone is, Sherlock?” the woman asked him with a teasing smile.

“It’s a market.” The man replied. “Perhaps we’ve landed on a Sunday?” He winked at her to show that he wasn’t serious.

They started to walk around the market, weaving their way through the stalls and stepping over the debris and litter they came across.

“Everyone left in rather a hurry I would say.” The man opined. “A lot of the produce has just been left behind. Abandoned. No self-respecting tradesman would do that without a good reason.”

The man paused suddenly and held up a hand to stop his companion. He was looking down at something at his feet.

“What is it, Doctor?” the woman asked. She peered down over his shoulder and saw what he had seen. An involuntary gasp of surprise escaped her when she saw the body lying face down in the litter and then she gagged as the smell hit her. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition and there were large spiders the size of the Doctor’s fist crawling across it and in and out of holes which she realised that they had made themselves.

“God… Doctor, that smell… Why didn’t I smell that before? It reeks!” she choked trying to hold down her breakfast.

“You probably did, but it just didn’t register until it was thrown into your face. Smells can be like that sometimes.” He put his arm around her and steered her over to one of the nearby stalls so she could sit down. “Are you alright, Clover?”

Clover nodded. “I will be.” She said quietly.

“I’m just going to take a look at the body. See if I can ascertain what happened to it. You just stay here and get better, okay?” the Doctor told her.

Clover nodded again. The Doctor stroked his hand down her cheek affectionately before turning and returning to the body.

He knelt down and examined the rotted cadaver as thoroughly as was possible without touching it, shooing away the spiders when they obscured his view. No matter how far they went though, they always scuttled back again.

“The poor fellow seems to have been murdered. Shot to death by some sort of lethal projectile energy weapon, but it’s difficult to know what kind. These spiders have eaten so much! However, for there to be as much left as there is then this attack must have happened fairly recently. I’d hazard a guess that this man hasn’t been dead for more than two weeks at the most.”

“We should probably look around and see if we can find any survivors.” Clover suggested as she hopped down from the stall upon which she had been sitting.

“Good idea. There must be a way out of here somewhere and into the rest of the ship.” The Doctor agreed as he rose to his feet again.

They left the corpse and continued their journey through the desolate market area. There were other bodies along the way and not all of them were human. The Doctor recognised about nineteen different species along with three that weren’t so familiar. They included Martians, Rills, space faring Homo Reptilia, Zygons, Terileptils and even one Mentor from Thoros Beta. All had been killed in the same way.

The Doctor spied a hatch over on the port side of the ship and made a beeline for it.

“Hello! This doesn’t look like it was part of the original ship’s design.” He remarked as they drew closer to it.

“How do you mean?” Clover wondered.

“Well the hatch is a different metal to the rest of the hull and it’s a slightly lighter shade of gunmetal grey. It’s also a bit shinier, suggesting it’s a bit newer, wouldn’t you agree?” the Doctor explained to her, gesturing at the hatch with one hand as he spoke.

“Alright, smarty-pants, I get it!” Clover smirked. She had to admit that just looking at the hatch in contrast to the bulkhead it was built into was answer enough to her question.

“Shall we have a look what’s on the other side?” the Doctor asked her with a cheeky grin, taking out his sonic sword and waving it about like it was a shiny new toy.

“I thought you’d never ask!” Clover replied with a wink.

The Doctor ran his sonic over the locking mechanism of the hatch and it emitted a shrill humming sound. An audible click was heard and the hatch swung open.

“I’ll go first.” The Doctor said. “There’s no telling what we might find on the other side.”

“Excuse me?” Clover cocked her head at him with a playful glare of mock indignation. “Who beat up the faux-Cyberman on Telos while you were asleep?”

“You did.” The Doctor conceded. “But I’m still going first!” He stuck out his tongue and opened the hatch all the way so that he could climb into the narrow tunnel beyond.

Once he was inside he helped pull Clover in after him, which only served to infuriate her even more as she was quite capable of climbing in by herself, thank you very much.

Once they were both on the other side of the hatch the Doctor pulled it closed behind them and used his sonic to relock it.

“If whatever killed those people is still about we don’t want it sneaking up behind us, do we?” the Doctor reasoned.

“I get it.” Clover agreed. “I also get why you’re being the over protective macho male. All those bodies have got me spooked too, but I promise you I can look after myself, Doctor and you’re not gonna get rid of me that easily.”

The Doctor smiled down at her.

“I know you can and I know you’ll be fine, but you’re too precious to me for me not to be a little too over cautious. Please indulge an old clone and his eccentricities, eh?”

“Not so much of the old, junior!” Clover smiled back.

The Doctor began to lead the way down the long metallic corridor. There was nothing spectacular about the metal tunnel they were in. It had been designed simply as a means of moving from one place to another so not a whole lot of creative thought had gone into its aesthetic construction.

After a short while they came to a crossroads junction.

“Which way should we go?” the Doctor asked. “Straight on, left or right?”

“I don’t suppose you have a three-sided Mogalian coin on you?” Clover asked.

“I believe you know the answer to that question already!” the Doctor replied, it was his turn to inflect mock indignation into his voice.

“Alright then, well… let’s go straight on then.” Clover suggested.

“Any particular reason?” the Doctor asked as they continued onwards.

“Meh! No, not really. Just seems to make sense to keep going in a straight line, I guess.” Clover replied.     

“We haven’t seen any more bodies here.” The Doctor noted.

“Hooray to that!” Clover cheered quietly.

Eventually they came to the other side of the tunnel and another hatch of a similar design to the original one.

“Allow me to get this one.” Clover bowed and produced her own sonic sword to open the hatch.

This one opened as easily as the first one had.

“I’m going first this time as well!” Clover insisted.

The Doctor opened his mouth to argue and then shut it again, thinking better of it.

“After you, my dear lady!” he stepped aside with a sweeping bow.

Clover smiled, blushing a little despite herself; the Doctor’s Scottish accent always got her feeling slightly tingly, especially when he emphasised it like that.

She dropped down into the room on the other side and the Doctor soon followed, taking care to lock the hatch behind him as he had done with the first one.

The room on the other side was as different to the market hall as the tunnel had been. The gun metal grey on the walls here was so dark it was almost black. This was less a room than a long corridor lined with doors on either side all the way down to the other end, which was very far away. A crossroads junction was visible halfway down. Every door had a barred window set into the top.

“If you ask me, Clover, I would swear to you that this is a completely different ship to the one that we landed in. This looks like a prison ship, whereas the first one was clearly a cargo vessel of some description.” The Doctor remarked.

He made his way to the nearest door on the left and peered inside. The room visible through the bars was clearly a cell of some sort with a hard uncomfortable looking bunk, a metal stool, a rudimentary wash basin in the far wall and a round contraption built into the floor which could only be a toilet. There was no one in the cell and when the Doctor looked at the locking mechanism he noticed that it had been blasted open by an energy weapon. A quick glance down the corridor told him that all of the cell doors that he could see had been forced open in the same way.

The Doctor and Clover made their way down the corridor, peering into each cell as they went. Each and every one was empty.

“Could there have been a prison break of some kind?” Clover wondered. “Maybe the escaped inmates are responsible for the massacre on the other ship?”

“Maybe!” the Doctor mused thoughtfully, and then they came to a cell that wasn’t empty.

The body was sprawled half way on the bunk and half on the floor, limbs spread-eagled at impossible angles. None of the scavenging Weave Spiders had touched this poor creature who looked to be some kind of cross between a reptile and a rodent. An ugly scorch mark was burned into his chest where the energy weapon had struck him and the reptilian features of his face were twisted into a grimace of agony.

“Why was this one killed, I wonder?” the Doctor said.

“Maybe he pissed off one of the other prisoners?” Clover suggested.

“Perhaps.” The Doctor conceded. “Or maybe it’s something else entirely. Something far more sinister!”

“Have you ever thought of getting a job narrating ghost stories on the radio? You’d be very good at it!” Clover smirked.

“I’ll bear that in mind if I ever want to retire from adventuring in time and space!” the Doctor replied with a wink.

“Yeah, as if that’s ever gonna happen!” Clover sniggered.

They continued down the corridor, drawing nearer to the crossroads.

“If it was a prison break then I’d imagine that all of the escaped prisoners have found their way off the ship by now.” The Doctor mused.

“If it was a prison break.” Clover agreed, emphasising the ‘if’.

They approached the crossroads with the intention of going straight again, but they still took a moment to glance left then right.

And then left again. Something was heading up the left hand corridor, straight towards them, something that both the Doctor and Clover recognised immediately.

The Doctor knew it from his memories; Clover remembered seeing a group of them hovering over her home city on Demeter VI on the first day she had met the Doctor.

It was a Dalek.

“Halt! Do not move or you will be exterminated!” it screeched in its horrible metallic voice.

The Doctor and Clover exchanged a horrified glance.

“Definitely not a prison break then!” the Doctor concluded.

“Run!” Clover urged.

And run they did.

They darted off down the corridor, straight ahead as had been their original intention. Just as they were over half way down the corridor the Dalek turned the corner in pursuit and now had them in its line of sight.

“Halt! Halt!” it repeated, and began to advance after them.

The Doctor and Clover reached the door at the end of the corridor. Hastily the Doctor took out his sonic sword and swept it over the locking mechanism. The Dalek was closing in behind them; it knew there was no escape for them so did not fire. They would need to be tested first.

Nothing was happening with the sonic and the locking mechanism.

“Shit! It’s a deadlock seal!” the Doctor cursed.

Clover looked at him aghast.

“You’ve been hanging around with me too much! That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear!” she remarked.

“This is hardly the time for such an observation. We have a Dalek closing in on us or had you forgotten that?” the Doctor chided.

“Stand where you are!” the Dalek instructed as it drew nearer. “You are to be tested!”

The Doctor turned to face the Dalek and extended the blade on his sonic sword. He would slice off its eye-piece if he could get in close enough.

Clover was still looking at the door when she saw the light on the locking mechanism blink from red to green.

“Doctor, it’s open!” she told him urgently.

The Doctor turned back to look at the door.

“Someone must have opened it on the other side.” The Doctor surmised.

The door was opening; the Dalek was getting nearer.

“Could it be another Dalek?” Clover wondered fearfully.

The door opened and the Doctor and Clover were greeted by a large hulking mountain of a man carrying a great big space gun. This was no ordinary man though. His face was furry like a squirrel’s and he had pointed tufty ears, and a large bushy tail was visible over his left shoulder.

“Get down!” he shouted to the Doctor and Clover as he spotted the approaching Dalek.

The two time travellers hit the floor as the squirrel-man levelled his weapon.

The Dalek swivelled its own gun into position.

“EXTERMINATE!” it screeched.

Squirrel fired first.

A bright pulse of yellow-white energy, like the unleashing of a miniature sun, burst forth from the barrel of Squirrel’s weapon and obliterated the Dalek where it stood. Only the lower half of its casing was left smouldering.

The Doctor and Clover got up gingerly.

“Thank you very much, sir.” The Doctor said gratefully. Then he paused and took a good look at the squirrel man standing in the doorway.

“Hang about! Don’t I know you?”

Squirrel scrutinised him closely with his dark eyes.

“I don’t think so.” He replied.

“What’s going on?” a small feminine voice came from behind Squirrel. “Get out of the way you overgrown chinchilla! I can’t see!”

A petite dark haired woman in her late thirties and also carrying a large gun nudged Squirrel aside.

“I know you as well!” the Doctor remarked, pointing a finger at her rather rudely.

“That’s great.” Clover interrupted before anyone else could say anything. “But before we decide where we all know each other from can we please get somewhere a little more safe and inconspicuous before any more Daleks come along?”

“The girl’s right.” Squirrel conceded. “The Daleks will know that one of their own has been attacked and will send a patrol to investigate. We can talk as we move.”

“Sounds good to me. Let’s go.” The Doctor agreed and started to move off before suddenly stopping. “Erm… where exactly are we going to?”

Squirrel shouldered past him into the corridor and began stomping purposefully back the way that the Doctor and Clover had come from.

“Follow me and keep up!” he growled impatiently.

Tammy shouldered her weapon and followed her husband.

“You heard the man!” she smirked at the time travellers as she passed them.

The Doctor deactivated the blade on his sonic sword and put it away before turning to follow the familiar couple. Clover was close behind him.

They skirted around the remains of the Dalek and headed back towards the crossroads, carrying on straight ahead when they reached them.

“At this rate we’ll be going right back to the TARDIS.” The Doctor grumbled.

“What did you say?” Squirrel peered over his shoulder at the Doctor.

“I didn’t mean any offence I was just…” the Doctor began apologetically.

“No, about the TARDIS.” Squirrel stopped and turned around. “Doctor, is that you?”

Tammy turned her attention on the Doctor too.

“Have you regenerated again?” she wondered.

The Doctor grinned.

“Ah, you see! I said I knew you! It’s Squirrel and Tammy isn’t it? From that thing with the Cybermen on that derelict! Did you have the baby yet, Tammy?” the Doctor embraced them both warmly as he spoke.

Tammy looked down at her flat, un-pregnant abdomen and looked at the Doctor with a ‘seriously?’ expression.

“You met the ‘baby’ last time we saw you!” she told him incredulously. “Remember? When you whisked my husband away to rescue your granddaughter from the Sontaran/Grendel alliance?”

The Doctor stuck his fingers in his ears.

“La La La! Can’t hear that! It hasn’t happened to me yet!” then a look passed across his face and he took his fingers out of his ears, crestfallen. “Unless it never will happen to me.”

“What are you talking about?” Squirrel wondered.

“It’s complicated.” The Doctor replied. “Yes, I am the Doctor and I do remember meeting you both with the Cybermen, but that wasn’t me who met you, but rather the original me that I was cloned from.” He paused for a moment for that information to sink in. “Yes, that’s right. I’m a clone of the Doctor. I have the memories of his first eight incarnations, but any after that then I’m afraid there’s nothing. The Doctor who ‘whisked’ you away was probably a future incarnation of him…” Another pause as a thought occurred to him. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Clover asked, as absorbed in this explanation as Squirrel and Tammy.

“Unless you met a future incarnation of me! After all, I am a clone of a Time Lord which means I have the ability to regenerate.” He turned to Clover with an apologetic look on his face. “I’m so sorry, Clover, but I might not look this handsome forever.”

“No, maybe you’ll look better!” she teased.

“If it was a future version of you, Doctor then I’m sorry.” Squirrel remarked.

“Sorry for what?” the Doctor asked puzzled.

“Clover wasn’t with you. You were travelling with some other young girl called Clara. I never met Clover before today.” Squirrel told him.

The Doctor waved his hand dismissively. “Oh well, then it can’t have been me then. It must have been the original Doctor. I would never leave Clover behind anywhere. I couldn’t be without her.”

Clover’s heart melted where she stood at the Doctor’s words and she felt her eyes moisten with tears. There was a nagging at the back of her head that spoiled the moment, however… What if the Doctor was wrong and it was him? What if for some reason in the future he did have to leave her behind? Or maybe she was dead? Clover suddenly felt cold and the tears in her eyes were no longer happy ones. She balled her fist and wiped her eyes before any of the tears could be shed. There was no use in crying over something that may not happen.

“It’s great to see you again, Doctor. Even if you are a clone. We could really use your help, but we’ve got to keep moving. We’ll explain everything that’s happened along the way.” Tammy said.

“We gotta get outta here! Now!” Squirrel shouted as he spied a second Dalek rounding the corner back towards the crossroads.

The Dalek spotted them and began to glide towards them.

“You will be exterminated!” it called.

“Quick!” the Doctor urged. “Blast it with your big gun again!”

“I can’t!” Squirrel replied.

“Can’t? What do you mean, ‘can’t’? There’s a bloody Dalek heading straight for us! Just shoot the damn thing!” the Doctor countered with exasperated frustration.

The Dalek was getting closer.

Tammy rolled her eyes and shouldered the Doctor and Squirrel aside before raising her own gun.

She opened fire, aiming for the eye-piece.

A dark blue burst of energy exploded from her gun and struck the Dalek’s eye-piece… and the entire dome of its head erupted in a ball of flame, spinning the Dalek into the nearby wall. Green goo oozed forth from the shattered shell as it sat there smoking and burning.

“Why couldn’t you have done that?” the Doctor demanded of Squirrel rather unreasonably.

“Because my gun needs to recharge after each firing!” Squirrel explained. “Happy now?”

He didn’t wait for an answer, but started off down the corridor towards the hatch.

“We need to get the fuck out of here!” he urged. “That Dalek might not have been alone.”

They reached the hatch and went through it, closing it once again behind them before making their way along the tunnel back to the other hatch.

“Where are we going?” Clover asked.

“Which way to your TARDIS?” Squirrel wondered.

“Straight ahead on the other side of the hatch, in that abandoned market hall. Why do you want to know? And who carries a gun that needs charging after only firing it once?” the Doctor replied.

“We’ll be safe in your TARDIS and I can tell you what’s been happening here. You might be able to use it to help us find our daughter as well.” Squirrel explained.

“Oh no!” the Doctor looked mortified. “I’m sorry. I’ve been behaving like an ass and you’ve been looking for your daughter. The last thing you want to hear is my complaining in your ears!”

“It’s alright. You didn’t know.” Squirrel answered gruffly.

They reached the other hatch and passed through it into the desolation and decay of the market hall. The Doctor took the lead so that they would find the TARDIS more quickly.

“If you must know, Doctor, my weapon is what’s known as _Le Petit Soleil_. Invented by a French engineer in the last century. They can fire a powerful energy blast with the equivalent power of firing a small sun at your target. It needs half an hour to recharge after each firing and it charges itself through kinetic energy so that every time I move whilst carrying it the weapon’s power rebuilds.” Squirrel explained as they picked their way through the bodies and abandoned stalls.

“He’s not lying!” Tammy smirked. “Time was when he used to wear the damn thing across his back while we were making love, just so the thing would get a charge!”

“He didn’t?” Clover asked with disbelief.

Squirrel was blushing, but said nothing.

Tammy just looked at Clover with a knowing smile and nodded. “Oh yes he did!” she said in a sing song voice.

Clover laughed.

“But surely you must carry a back-up weapon?” the Doctor asked.

Squirrel looked relieved at the change of subject.

“Sure I do, but nothing that can bring down a Dalek. That’s why Tammy brought her little piece along.” He replied.

Very soon they saw a very familiar blue box ahead.

The Doctor went on in front of them to unlock the door and ushered them all in.

Once they were all gathered around the control console the Doctor rubbed his hands together gleefully.

“Right. So, what’s been happening then?” he asked.

Squirrel and Tammy looked at each other. Where to begin?

“Well, to begin with, do you guys even know where you’ve landed?” Squirrel wondered.

The Doctor scratched the back of his neck. “Not really. We’ve been letting the TARDIS select our landings at random for the last few trips or so. Makes it much more exciting.” He confessed.

“You can’t get much more exciting than Daleks.” Squirrel concurred with nod of his head.

“This place we’re in is made up of hundreds of spaceships that have been drawn here by the magnetic pull of another ship which itself was drawn here by the gravitational pull of the Manticore asteroid belt many hundreds of years ago. These ships have formed a crude sphere around the central ship so that they’ve become rather like an artificial planet. After a while space travellers started to settle here and it became known as the Scrap.” Tammy explained.

“And now you’ve been invaded by Daleks and you two are part of some sort of resistance cell, am I right?” the Doctor guessed.

“If only it were that simple.” Tammy replied with a sigh.

“Go on.” The Doctor prompted curiously.

“These Daleks haven’t come from outside the Scrap, but rather from within it.” Tammy told him.

“Now that’s interesting. How did that happen?” the Doctor wondered.

“If you stop interrupting they’ll tell you!” Clover teased.

“That ship Tammy just got done telling you about. The one that’s at the centre of the Scrap that drew all the other ships here…” Squirrel began.

The Doctor looked at Clover apologetically as he interrupted again.

“Don’t tell me. It’s a Dalek ship, right?”

“Bang on the money!” Squirrel nodded.

“Don’t tell me that after all this time there were still live Daleks on it?” the Doctor exclaimed incredulously.

“Not quite.” Tammy replied.

“This is where our little Chipmunk comes into the mix.” Squirrel added.

“Chipmunk is your daughter, right?” Clover asked.

“That’s right.” Tammy nodded. “When we first came to the Scrap we signed her up with the human school here. Unfortunately she was the only enhanced human hybrid in her class which… made things complicated with the other kids.”

“She was bullied.” Clover said; more of a statement than a question.

“Yup.” Squirrel nodded. “One day the bullies dared her and her friend, a human/Martian hybrid kid called Nemir, to go down to the Dalek ship and bring something back from it to prove that they’d been there. It was after they came back from that the trouble started and people started to disappear.”

“That’s right; people were disappearing at a rate of one person a week and this went on for six weeks. During that time searches were made, but no trace was ever found of any of the missing people.” Tammy continued.

“I take it no one thought to check the Dalek ship at the centre of the Scrap?” the Doctor said.

“That’s right, no one did.” Tammy nodded.

“No one ever went down there so we didn’t see the need to.” Squirrel explained. “At that stage we didn’t know about Chipmunk’s little adventure there. She didn’t tell us about that until after the sixth week.”

“What happened after the sixth week?” Clover wondered.

“That’s when the Daleks attacked the market hall. The one we’re in now. There were only six of them, but even one Dalek would have been enough. We were unprepared for them and it was a massacre, as you’ve seen. The survivors drifted off into different corners of the Scrap to seek refuge. A lot of us are holed up in the panic room on board the Judoon Justice vessel we just came from. It’s impregnable even to the Daleks.” Squirrel told them.

“Wait a minute.” The Doctor held a hand in the air as he scratched his chin thoughtfully with the other. “Six people disappear over six weeks and then you get attacked by six Daleks.”

Clover saw instantly what the Doctor was getting at.

“Oh my God! Are you saying that those six missing people were the Daleks?” she exclaimed in horror.

Squirrel nodded.

“That’s what he’s saying.”

“More people have been taken by the Daleks and converted since then. It’s difficult to say how many there are of them now, but if they keep reproducing at the rate that they have been then very soon they’ll out number everyone else on the Scrap.” Tammy said.

“And it’s not just anyone they’ll turn into a Dalek.” Squirrel went on. “They’re very picky.”

“That’s what the ‘tests’ are all about. If a Dalek catches you it will ‘test’ you to see if you’re worthy enough to be made into a Dalek” Tammy picked up the story again.

“If you’re not then it will just exterminate you where you stand.” Squirrel concluded.

“And what is it they’re looking for in the perfect Dalek?” Clover asked.

“I think I can guess.” The Doctor muttered darkly.

“A healthy capacity for hate.” Squirrel confirmed and the Doctor nodded.

“That’s why all of those prison cells had been cleaned out back on the Judoon ship.” The Doctor realised.

“And that one who wasn’t. The dead one…” Clover paused and shuddered. “Well I guess he didn’t pass.”

“How does Chipmunk fit into all of this?” the Doctor wondered.

“The item that she and Nemir took from the Dalek ship. Chipmunk believes it might have been what activated the Daleks’ reproductive system.” Squirrel explained.

“She feels responsible for everything that has happened and about three days ago she took off with Nemir with the intention of doing something about it.” Tammy continued; her voice tinged with a mix of anger and fear.

“Poor kid thinks she can do something to put a stop to all of this. They’re using the ventilation shafts to move between the ships. Obviously I’m too big to get in those, so Tammy and I have been trying to track her down and bring her back using the more dangerous route of running through the corridors like you’ve seen.” Squirrel explained.

“But now we have your TARDIS, you can help us find her, Doctor.” Tammy said. “Can you use your scanning systems to find her the same way that you found me when I was taken by the Cybermen all those years ago?” There was a note of pleading desperation in her voice and for the first time Clover saw tears in her eyes.

“Already on it!” the Doctor beamed as he busied himself at the console.

Tammy and Squirrel stood either side of the Doctor, waiting with baited breath to see what he would find.

“I think I’ve got her.” The Doctor proclaimed triumphantly. “And her friend is with her too. That’s good…” then he paused and his smile faltered. “Ah… not so good.”

“What is it, Doctor? Where are they?” Tammy demanded.

“They’re both alive and well,” the Doctor reassured her, “but they are on the Dalek ship. Deep in the lion’s den, so to speak.”

Squirrel unshouldered _Le Petit Soleil_.

“Then we’ll just have to go in and get them won’t we.” He announced with grim determination.

The Doctor eyed the massive weapon gingerly.

“Yes, we will, but before you go killing any more Daleks, I’d like to take a look inside one first. Which means we’re going to have to capture one of them alive!”

“Are you crazy?” Squirrel erupted. “Why do you wanna go and do something stupid like that?”

“These Daleks were made out of people taken from this ship. They aren’t Kaled mutants that have been specifically engineered. I need to see if there is any hope at all of reversing the process and saving these people.” The Doctor explained.

“You’re wasting your time!” Squirrel argued. “Killing the poor bastards is the best mercy we can show them!”

“And what if it was Chipmunk inside one of those Daleks?” the Doctor countered.

“Fuck you, Doctor!” Squirrel turned away, balling his fists up. The Doctor was his friend and he did not want to hit him if he could help it.

Tammy held his arm and caressed it tenderly. Her small fingers could barely enclose his massive bicep.

“What harm can it do to at least look, baby?” she said soothingly, then to the Doctor. “We’ll help you catch a Dalek, but we’re getting Chipmunk first, understood?”

The Doctor nodded.

“Understood.”

He began to lay in the necessary co-ordinates.

“Hold on tight people! We’re about to enter the belly of the beast!” he announced as he pressed the dematerialisation control.

 

Outside the TARDIS howled in protest as it was ripped back into the vortex.

 

Chipmunk and Nemir had been lost in the vents for hours before they were finally able to get their bearings and make their way to the Dalek ship without being seen by any actual Daleks. The journey had taken the better half of nearly three days to make. Every so often they would have to drop down from the vents and use the tunnels to move from one ship to another before climbing back into the vents again to continue their journey.

When they had finally reached the Dalek ship they had expected to find a guard that they had been prepared to disable when the time came, but had been surprised to find that there was no guard.

“Maybe there isn’t a guard because they want people to come to them.” Nemir had suggested as they had climbed into the Dalek ship’s vent system. “As far as they’re concerned they’re superior to us in every way. Why should they fear us?”

That had been earlier this morning. Since then they had gotten lost again as they tried to find the room that they had entered six months ago. The room where all their troubles had begun.

Then half an hour ago Chipmunk’s super-sensitive tufty ears had detected a metallic scraping shuffle elsewhere in the vents.

“Something is following us in here!” she whispered to Nemir who was crawling ahead of her. His father’s sonic cannon was slung across his back and Chipmunk was packing her own small arsenal pilfered from her parents’ weapons collection.

“Then we’d better find where we’re going before it finds us!” he’d hissed back at her.

Then Chipmunk had heard another sound. A familiar howling and grinding that she’d heard once before two years ago before her family had moved to the Scrap.

“What is that?” Nemir wondered.

For some reason Chipmunk found that she was grinning.

“I can’t remember for certain, but I’m pretty sure that’s a good noise.” She told him.

Nemir made his way to the nearest grill opening and peered through to see what he could see.

A blue box was standing in an empty corridor a light flashing on top of it. The howling noise had subsided and after a moment the light stopped flashing.

A door opened on the box and outstepped four people. Two familiar and two not so familiar.

“Nelly, you’re mum and dad are here with two other people!” Nemir called excitedly. Nelly was short for Eleanor, Chipmunk’s born name, but Nemir was one of the few people who actually used it.

“Is one of the other people a tall old guy with spiky grey hair?” Chipmunk asked.

“No, he’s a young guy with dark brown hair.” Nemir told her.

Chipmunk’s face screwed up in puzzlement.

“Ooh, I don’t know who he is!” she proclaimed.

Then a loud Scottish voice called from outside.

“It’s alright you two. You can come on out, it’s perfectly safe. At the moment.”

Nemir shifted onto his back and kicked the grill out before jumping down to join the new arrivals.

Then Chipmunk moved in front of the opening and grinned down at her parents.

“Am I glad to see you guys!” she chirped as she prepared to jump down.

Squirrel was beaming from tufted ear to tufted ear to see his daughter safe and well and he reached up to help her down.

A long telescopic metal tentacle coiled around Chipmunk’s waist just as her father was about to grab her and she was yanked back violently into the vent.

“Dad!” Chipmunk’s scream receded into the darkness.

“Chipmunk!” Squirrel exclaimed in desperation. He was helpless to do anything.

“They’ll be taking her to their control room.” The Doctor said. “Don’t worry, Squirrel, we’ll get her back!”

“I’m not hanging around waiting for you to come up with some ‘clever’ plan! I’m going to get her back right now!” Squirrel growled. Before anyone could stop him he raced off down the corridor in the direction he had heard her being taken.

Tammy was hot on his heels.

“Sorry, Doctor. She’s my daughter too!” she called as she left.

Nemir was about to follow them, but the Doctor laid a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“Let them go. I could use your help with what I have in mind.” The Doctor said to him. “Is that a sonic cannon on your back?”

Nemir smiled grimly in response.

 

The Dalek had been sent to investigate the temporal disturbance that had been detected on deck seven. When it arrived it found the deck to be deserted apart from a strange blue box that appeared to be humming with some sort of innate power. The Dalek scanned the box as it approached cautiously.

“Source of temporal disturbance has been detected.” It confirmed.

“Now!” shouted a voice that came from behind the box.

The Dalek swivelled its upper body; eye-stalk and gun stick prepared to greet the unknown hostiles.

Nemir was quicker. He jumped out from behind the TARDIS and blasted the Dalek with his sonic cannon.

The Dalek emitted a squawking screech of pain, spun on its axis and then was still. Eye, gun and arm all drooped and became inactive.

Nemir was joined by the Doctor and Clover.

“Well done, lad. That was spot on.” The Doctor congratulated the young boy. “Just enough sonic power to disorientate and stun the Dalek, but not to kill it.”

“How long have we got before it wakes up again?” Clover wondered.

“Difficult to say. Not long probably so I’d better do this quickly.” The Doctor replied.

He stepped over to the inert Dalek and took out his sonic sword.

“Please, please, please let there be a whole person in there!” he muttered to himself as he passed the sonic device over the upper casing of the Dalek.

There was an audible click followed by a hiss of escaping gasses and slowly the Dalek casing split open down the middle like the front of an ornate puzzle box.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” the Doctor moaned in despair and sank to his knees upon seeing what was inside.

Attached by a spaghetti network of wires and tubes there sat suspended within, the disembodied head of what had once been a young blonde girl. The hair was greasy and straggly from the internal fluids of the Dalek and the complexion of the skin was grey and slick with the consistency of wet putty. The girl’s eyes were closed and she looked as if she was in a deep peaceful sleep.

“Venus!” Nemir gasped in horror.

“You knew her?” Clover asked. She was trying very hard not to be sick.

The Doctor was still on his knees muttering to himself over and over again.

“I knew her.” Nemir confirmed. “She was a bitch, but she didn’t deserve this. No one deserves this.”

It was then that her eyes snapped open.

“Under attack!” the voice that escaped the girl’s harsh, thin lips was a husk of a whisper. “Must exterminate. Exterminate!”

The Doctor put his hand over the girl’s mouth and silenced her rasped threats.

“I’m so sorry.” He whispered, voice cracking with emotion.

He placed the hilt of his sonic sword under her chin and activated the nano-blade.

The blade pierced her chin and lanced up into her brain until the tip burst out through the top of her skull. A slender trickle of blood slid down the front of her face like crimson tears and the twitching head became still.

The Doctor retracted the blade again and stayed on his knees for a long while, cradling the head in the palm of his hands.

“I’m so sorry!” he repeated again and again, hot tears coursing down his cheeks.

Clover and Nemir stood by helplessly. Clover wanted to go to him and hold him. She had never seen him like this. Her Doctor was broken and she just wanted to fix him, but at the moment she wasn’t sure how to do it.

Then the look of despair on the Doctor’s face turned to one of fury. He wiped the tears from his face with a balled fist and slowly got back onto his feet. Clover and Nemir stood aside as he brushed passed them and strode off determinedly down the corridor, his sonic sword clutched in a fist at his side. They ran to keep up with him.

“What are you going to do, Doctor?” Clover asked with no small hint of concern.

The Doctor answered without looking at her and without breaking his stride. “I’m going to kill them all!”    

 

Chipmunk had been dragged all through the ventilation shafts by the sinister metallic spider that had snatched her away from her parents until it finally reached its destination. She was unceremoniously pulled out of the vent system and into the room that contained the Dalek reproducing machine that she had inadvertently reactivated six months ago. There were about six or seven Daleks waiting for her within. The spider released her from its tentacle and skittered back into its housing on the machine.

Chipmunk sat on the cold metal floor looking around her anxiously as the Daleks closed in. She still had all her weapons, but she dared not use any of them. They would cut her down before she could kill even one of them. It wasn’t worth the risk.

“Hello!” she piped up bravely. “I don’t suppose you guys have got any lemonade? I’m dead thirsty!”

“Silence!” one of the Daleks screeched. She could not tell which it had been.

“You are to be ‘tested’!” another Dalek proclaimed and this time Chipmunk was able to identify it as being the one right in front of her as she saw its dome lights blinking.

“Tested?” Chipmunk stammered. “I never was much good at exams. You haven’t even given me a chance to prepare for this one!”

“No preparation is required!” the Dalek intoned menacingly.

Without warning it extended its arm and shoved its sucker-cup right up into her face.

Chipmunk tried to bat the arm away, but it was far too strong.

“Get away from me!” she cried. “I don’t do that sort of thing on a first date!” She was still trying to be brave, but it was getting harder and harder to do so.

Mum and dad will be coming for me, I know it! She told herself and the thought helped.

“Test is complete!” the Dalek proclaimed suddenly and withdrew its arm from her face.

“Did I pass?” Chipmunk grinned, cheerful despite her current predicament.

“You have no hate in you. You would not make a good Dalek.” The Dalek told her.

Chipmunk’s smile broadened.

“Thank you very much!” she replied. “Can I get that on a certificate?”

“You are of no further use to us!” the Dalek continued, ignoring her. “You will be exterminated!”

Shit! Chipmunk thought, this wasn’t good. She had to stall them somehow until help could arrive.

“Wait, wait, wait!” she protested. “You want hate? I can give you hate!”

The Dalek paused.

“Explain!” it demanded.

“I can’t stand mushy peas!” Chipmunk offered.

The Dalek was not impressed.

“EXTERMINATE!!!”

The Dalek exploded in a ball of flame and Chipmunk had to curl up into a ball to avoid being showered by debris.

When the smoke cleared she risked a look up.

All that was left of the Dalek was the bottom half of its casing which smouldered like the dying embers of an autumn bonfire. Over in the entrance of the room there stood her father and her mother.

Squirrel was slinging _Le Petit Soleil_ onto his back and pulling out a different weapon.

Tammy smiled at her daughter.

“You told me that you liked mushy peas!” she chided with mock indignation.

Then all hell broke loose.

Squirrel and Tammy ducked and ran for the nearest available cover as blue bolts of energy whizzed towards them from the surviving Daleks.

The air was filled with laser beams, smoke and repeated cries of “Exterminate!”

Chipmunk took the opportunity to start crawling towards the vent that she had been brought in by so that she could hide until the fighting was done.

To her left a Dalek was spun around a full three hundred and sixty degrees, its dome exploding as it was caught by a well-aimed blaster round.

Then she found that she could not crawl forward any further. A cursory glance upwards told her that there was a Dalek towering over her, its gun pointing straight at her.

“Do not move!” it commanded her.

“Who me?” she squeaked. “I was just looking for a contact lens. Have you seen one about?”

The Dalek ignored her and turned its attention on her parents concealed behind the reproduction apparatus.

“Cease firing!” it shouted. “Cease firing or I will exterminate the descendant!”

Sure enough all firing abruptly ceased.

“Let her go!” Squirrel called from his place of concealment.

“Come out of hiding and she will not be harmed!” the Dalek instructed.

There was a long pause, but soon after Squirrel and Tammy emerged with their hands behind their heads, fingers laced.

“Test them!” the Dalek holding Chipmunk at gun point instructed one of its fellows.

A Dalek came forward and probed first Tammy and then Squirrel with its sucker arm. Both endured the uncomfortable process with teeth clenched dignity.

“Both subjects are lacking in sufficient levels of hate. They are unsuitable for Dalek conversion.” The Dalek reported.

“You will all be exterminated!” the other Dalek declared.

Every gun stick in the room was swung to cover either Squirrel, Tammy or Chipmunk.

And then something very odd indeed happened. Several odd somethings actually.

Tammy, Chipmunk and Squirrel suddenly found themselves drifting, weightless into the air.

“What the..?” Squirrel stammered. “What’s going on?”

Conversely the Daleks suddenly found themselves transfixed and unable to move.

“My base seems to have been magnetised to the hull of the ship!” one Dalek intoned.

And then the Doctor’s face appeared on a large view-screen set into the wall.

“Give that Dalek a gold star!” he remarked drily. “You have me to thank for that!”

“Who are you?” the Dalek that had cornered Chipmunk asked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m the Doctor and I’m the man who’s about to kill every last one of you!” the Doctor declared.   

“You are lying!” the Dalek countered. “You do not have the power!” There was a note of uncertainty in the hateful electronic twang of its voice. Knowledge of ‘The Doctor’, ‘The Oncoming Storm’ had been downloaded into the brain of every new Dalek that had been churned out by the machine.

They knew to hate him and to fear him!

“Am I? Why would I do that?” the Doctor replied. “Why would I lie about doing something that I want to do oh so badly?”

The Dalek had no answer to that.

“As for me not having the power.” The Doctor continued. “If you know who I am then you know that isn’t even remotely true at all! I have the power!”

“Your hatred for the Daleks is strong!” the Dalek proclaimed. “You would require no test. You would make a good Dalek!”

“Hatred for Daleks is no bad thing if you ask me.” The Doctor replied with a sinister smile. “It makes killing you all in cold blood a hell of a lot easier, that’s for sure. Bye, bye!”

Suddenly a powerful surge of electricity coursed from the floor of the ship and into the body of every single Dalek.

They all screamed and writhed as much as it was possible for a body of metal to writhe and then… BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

One by one their domed heads exploded.

 

All across the Scrap on every single ship that composed the artificial world, every single Dalek that had been made met its final end in the exact same way. Electricity surged, Daleks screamed and then heads burst in a ball of flame. In a matter of moments it was all over and they were all dead.

 

The electricity surge cut off as abruptly as it had started and without warning Squirrel, Tammy and Chipmunk fell back to the floor in an undignified heap.

“Erm… what just happened?” Squirrel asked.

 

A short while later they all met up again back at the TARDIS. The Doctor had explained to them all over the monitor how he had hacked into the systems on the Dalek ship and every single other ship that made up the Scrap. He had switched off the gravity and magnetised the floors and then finally he had sent a deadly electrical current through the floor of every ship to destroy all the Daleks. Everyone else had been made weightless so that they wouldn’t be fried too.

Squirrel had admitted that it had been an ingenious plan executed to perfection. He had taken the time to irreparably damage the Dalek’s reproduction machine and the spider-robot before leaving the room so that they would never cause any trouble on the Scrap again.

“Looks like I owe you my thanks again, Doctor.” Squirrel was saying as they stood to say their good byes outside the police box. “You saved my life and the lives of my wife and daughter; the two most precious people in my world. If you ever need me for anything you know where to find me.”

“Thanks.” The Doctor replied, shaking his hand. “I’ll certainly hold you to that.”

Clover was done hugging Tammy and Chipmunk and even Nemir. She turned to the Doctor and took his hand.

“We ready to go?” she asked.

“Yes, I think so.” The Doctor replied, giving her hand a squeeze.

“I’d hold onto that one, Doctor. She’s a keeper!” Tammy advised with a wink.

“I know. I’m a very lucky Time Lord indeed.” The Doctor replied, winking back.

He unlocked the TARDIS door and ushered Clover inside before following her in.

Almost as soon as the door had closed behind them there came a harsh howling and grinding noise and the police box slowly faded away.

 

The Doctor was in a sombre mood after dematerialising the TARDIS and the sudden change did not go unnoticed by Clover. She sidled up to him and leaned her head upon his shoulder which he responded to with a half-hearted smile.

“What’s got you so down in the dumps?” Clover asked him.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave me, you know.” He replied unexpectedly.

Clover lifted her head from his shoulder and frowned.

“Why on Earth would I want to leave you?” she wondered.

“You saw what I was like there with the Daleks.” He told her. “This is the first time I’ve met them, but I have all the memories of every other time that ‘he’ met them and you know that I remember it all like it happened to me! All that hatred. I’d never felt that before. Not in this body. Not until today. It was awful and look what it made me do!”

“You didn’t have any choice. You saved everyone on the Scrap.” Clover assured him.

“Everyone that hadn’t already been exterminated or turned into a Dalek. You see that’s the thing… none of them were even pure blood Daleks. They were all people who had been twisted and abused and turned into abominations by the most hateful species in the universe. Killing them all was a kindness. I know that. But doesn’t it change the way you look at me? The way that you feel about me? After seeing all that I am capable of, all because of the Daleks?” the Doctor demanded of her bitterly.  

“You want to know what I think of you?” Clover threw back at him.

“Yes!” he shouted angrily.

“You want to know how I feel?”

“Yes!” he repeated and he could barely bring himself to look at her.

Clover took his face into her hands and forced him to look at her. She looked into his eyes, there was so much pain and self-loathing in those eyes right now and he looked back at her and then she kissed him and he was kissing her back and all that pain was forgotten.

 

**The End**


End file.
